What is Primal Branding®? Why does it matter to family offices?

When Primal Branding® is applied in family offices, it creates a sense of belief and belonging among stakeholders. This approach can align generations, stakeholders, and teams, fostering trust, vision, and culture. In this introductory insight, Simple Expert Patrick Hanlon explains the seven elements of Primal Branding® and the projected outcomes of employing it in family offices.

primal branding

What you need to know

  • Primal Branding® is a framework of seven elements—creation story, creed, icons, rituals, lexicon, nonbelievers, and leaders—that build belief and belonging.
  • For family offices, this approach aligns generations, stakeholders, and teams, fostering trust, vision, and culture.
  • A strong brand, founded on belief, creates a more valuable family office for all involved.

Brand & design Published on Simple February 3, 2025

It’s no secret that brands have more value than an enterprise with mere assets. The world’s most resonant “Brands” command evaluations that are many times more than their competitors. But how do you create—or sustain—a brand?

An analysis completed years ago concluded that the world’s most powerful brands are embedded with seven key elements: a creation story, creed, icons, rituals, lexicon, nonbelievers, and an identifiable leader.

This codework, called “Primal Branding ,” was found to attract not only customers, but also create communities of advocates and zealots.

In an enterprise, these advocates are your repeat customers and stockholders.

In the $3 trillion media and entertainment industry, they are raving fans.

In family offices, they are the community of family generations, key stakeholders, executive teams,  estate managers, asset managers, and advisors who shape, embrace and impact your mission, vision,  values, and strategies.

Once these seven pieces of Primal Code are communicated, they attract people who share your beliefs.  These people not only believe, they belong. This belonging creates preference, so that people not only  buy you, they buy into you.

This is crowd theory. We know that human beings are hard-wired to congregate, the question is how do we get them to gather around you?

Primal Branding is a systematic approach validated globally by billion-dollar brands (and those who want to become billion-dollar brands). In fact, the book “Primal Branding” is required reading on YouTube, the second largest social engagement platform on the planet.

The fundamentals

Brands are belief systems.

Once you consider a brand as a belief system, you inherently acquire all the factors that make family offices important: trust, values, vision, resonance, relevance, and preference. Most of all, this is not a transaction; it is a relationship.

These seven elements can help to make your family office efforts “believable”:

  1. Creation story: Whether you are 100 years old or 100 days old, it is crucial for people to know who you are and where you come from. All belief systems come with a story attached. Two guys building computers in a garage. A man who used his wife’s waffle iron to design a new sole for running shoes. Two guys in a Stanford dorm room creating an Internet search engine. The origin myth often launches the hero’s journey and is the foundation of your narrative.  Not boring history, but an exciting legacy.
  2. Creed: Belief systems have core principles. A statement that declares all people are equal. A belief that sports are supreme. A belief in life after death. This is not your mission statement, but a few words you can put on a t-shirt: Think different. Just do it. Invent.
  3. Icons: These are concentrations of meaning that identify your brand. Icons use all the senses—sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. The Nike swoosh. Apple’s simple, user-friendly aesthetics. Colours like Coke red, Apple white, and McDonald’s golden arches. The taste of Ladurée macarons. The scent of Chanel #5. Office aesthetics.
  4. Rituals: The vitality of a brand comes from the number of meaningful interactions created between you and your believers. Rituals can be processes. Rituals include posting user reviews, daily routines, and rites of passage. Brands succeed by building repeated positive interactions with people both inside and outside of their organisation.
  5. Lexicon: Also known as “Sacred Words”, these are words known (and often created) by people within your community. “Iced grande skinny decaf latte,” “onboarding,” “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” “effective altruism,” “hollow chain,” “Burners.” “Dead Heads.” “Janeites” (1870 fans of Jane Austen). “E pluribus unum.” “Mozart’s Symphony in B Minor.” “Coltrane.” If you don’t know the words, you’re not a part of the group.
  6. Nonbelievers: These are people who do not want to believe in you because they believe in something else. (Good for them!) Mac/PC. Coffee/Tea. Coffee/Red Bull. Doves/Hawks. Sacred/Profane. Manchester United/Arsenal.
  7. Leader(s): All belief systems have a leader. This is usually the innovator or risk taker who set out to recreate the world (typically against all odds) according to their own point of view. In many organisations, “managers” have replaced the original visionary entrepreneur, and it is their function to uphold the original principles that made the organisation great in the first place.

“By considering the seven pieces of Primal Code®,” declares Francois Botha in Forbes magazine,  “families will be able to build brands that resonate deeply.”

Primal Branding is not only foundational, it is transformational. It moves people from “Who cares?” to  “We care!”. People not only buy you, they buy into you.

Importantly, while these elements provide key stakeholders with a unified understanding of vision,  values, strategy and objectives, they also help to create culture inside your organisation.

Projected outcomes of employing Primal Branding for family offices

Primal Branding is an intentional, structured process. These are just some of the advantages we have experienced:

  • Aligns key stakeholders, generations, coworkers, partners, vendors, investors, and others via a unified narrative.
  • Optimises content generation for social, digital and traditional media.
  • Authentically attracts supporters from government, finance, and the general public (i.e., philanthropy, education, sustainability).
  • Motivates the entire organisation to understand your purpose (reason for being) and rally around meaningful work.
  • Helps to build and sustain culture and community inside your organisation (this consistently impacts recruiting, motivation, and work with meaning).

To sum it up

This proprietary construct, outlined in the pioneering book “Primal Branding ” (Simon & Schuster, 2006)  has been vetted by billion-dollar enterprises around the world. For some, the “Primal” construct substantiates what they are already doing—and helps to make decisions around stability, growth and preserving capital more deliberate and intentional. For others, Primal Branding is transformational.

Never has the subject of brand been more vital to family offices. Building a brand rooted in belief creates a more worthwhile entity for everyone involved.

It’s relevant. Engaging. Fun. It’s just life.

Primal Branding® and Primal Code® are registered trademarks.

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About the Authors

Patrick Hanlon

Patrick Hanlon

Branding Strategy

Patrick's expertise in creating belief systems that build communities of advocates can provide family offices with valuable insights into developing strong, cohesive brands that resonate with their target audiences.

Connect with Patrick Hanlon